“The light of nature can never scatter the darkness in question. This light has never yet sufficed to make the question clear to any portion of our benighted race, whether the soul is immortal. Cicero, incomparably the most able defender of the soul’s immortality of which the heathen world can yet boast, very ingenuously confesses that, after all the arguments which he had adduced in order to confirm the doctrine in question, it so fell out that his mind was satisfied of it only when directly employed in contemplating the arguments adduced in its favor. At all other times he fell unconsciously into a state of doubt and darkness. It is notorious, also, that Socrates, the next most able advocate, among the heathen, of the same doctrine, has adduced arguments to establish the never-ceasing existence of the soul which will not bear the test of examination. If there be any satisfactory light, then, on the momentous question of a future state, it must be sought from the word of God.” H. H. Dobney, Baptist minister, of England (Future Punishment, p. 107), says:-- “Reason cannot prove man to be immortal. We may devoutly enter the temple of nature, we may reverently tread her emerald floor, and gaze on her blue, ‘star-pictured ceiling,’ but to our anxious inquiry, though proposed with heart-breaking intensity, the oracle is dumb, or like those of Delphi and Dodona, mutters only an ambitious reply that leaves us in utter bewilderment.” And what information have they been able to give us, who have either been ignorant of divine revelation, or, having the light, have turned their backs upon it? Listen to a little of what they have told us, which sufficiently indicates the character of the knowledge they possessed. Socrates, when about to drink the fatal hemlock, said:-- “I am going out of the world, and you are to continue in it; but which of us has the better part, is a secret to every one but God.” Cicero, after recounting the various opinions of philosophers on this subject, levels all their systems to the ground by this ingenuous confession:-- “Which of these is true, God alone knows, and which is the most probable, is a very great question.” Seneca, reviewing the arguments of the ancients on this subject, said:-- “Immortality, however desirable, was rather promised than proved by these great men.” And the skeptic Hobbs, when death was forcing him from this state of existence, could only exclaim, with dread uncertainty, “I am taking a leap in the dark!”--dying words not calculated to inspire any great degree of comfort and assurance in the hearts of those who are inclined to follow in his steps.